William Morris | Glass Artist

Powerful sculptures in glass by a contemporary master.

For more than twenty-five years, in a career that brought him to the forefront of the modern Studio Glass movement, William Morris perfected a repertoire of techniques that virtually no other American glass artist can equal. Internationally acclaimed for his compelling work with glass, William Morris approached the demands of glassblowing and glass sculpting with an experimental eye and an innovative hand. For Morris, glass is an endlessly intriguing material, fragile yet timeless, preserving the spontaneity of the creative moment unlike any other medium. William Morris artworks in glass are widely admired by artists, sought by collectors, and praised by critics.

He’s simply the best glass blower that America has produced. He has been able to inject content into the ravishing beauty of glass, yet he has in no way compromised the aesthetic pleasures of glass. He has brought an existential depth to glass that is entirely new.

Patterson Sims
Associate Art Director at the Seattle Art Museum

The first time I saw William Morris’ Idols I felt an electric thrill, not only because of the incredible artistic prowess each of them represents, but also because I recognized them. It was like finally finding myself before the intangible beings I had been looking for all my life, that I had glimpsed in dreams and invoked in my writing.

Isabel Allende
Author

By reminding us of the ancient past, we are confronted in Morris’ work by contrast with our troubled present. By avoiding the scolding character of political art, he proposes relief, an escape into the past that is really a window onto the present, a present that sidesteps systems and elevates custom, ritual and a masculinity under assault.

Matthew Kangas
Art Critic and Curator

In looking at Morris’s art, we are reminded of what it is to be ancient, what it is to be human; we momentarily reconnect with that elemental aspect of our psyches this is prehistoric. Beyond his technical brilliance in the craft of blowing and sculpting glass, it is Morris’s ability to enter and work within the realm of the unconscious that makes him a superior artist.

Tina Oldknow
Curator of Modern Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass

William Morris, even after his retirement in 2007, has a special place in the history of modern sculpture in glass. His anthropological empathy, his respect for communal ancestors and civilizations long past, and his uncanny ability to make glass look like everything except, well, glass, certainly created a profound body of work that continues to fascinate audiences.